The Vault of Horror blog recently posted The "Cyber-Horror Elite's" Top 50 Horror Films of All Time. This list was generated from the Top 10 lists of "32 cyber-horror notables," as detailed HERE.
This was created (as stated in the above blog post) in retaliation against HMV's "highly flawed" survey of the top 50 horror movies of all time, culled from HMV’s annual survey of more than 6,000 customers, and conducted on HMV.com over a four-week period between September 19 and October 20, 2008 (source: HERE ).
This was created (as stated in the above blog post) in retaliation against HMV's "highly flawed" survey of the top 50 horror movies of all time, culled from HMV’s annual survey of more than 6,000 customers, and conducted on HMV.com over a four-week period between September 19 and October 20, 2008 (source: HERE ).
This blogger does nothing to explain why he feels HMV's poll is "highly flawed," so I'm assuming it's simply because he didn't like the list, which is hardly the same thing. If there's a more scientific reason why it's "highly flawed," it wasn't addressed in the above blog post.
In his initial response to HMV's list he states, "... you have SAW in the top 5, which, even as a supporter of that movie, I have to say is nothing short of effrontery. And as much as I also enjoy A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, putting it in the top 10 is a bit of stretch. And THE LOST BOYS? Really? Top 50 of all time?? Even letting picks like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and HOSTEL slide, how on earth do FINAL DESTINATION and the remake of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL make a list like this? And I'm sorry--as unpopular as this might make me--but there's no way FRIDAY TH E13TH belongs here, either. That movie is a guilty pleasure more than anything else."
Really?
From the "The "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list...
13. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (not "Top 10", but close)
15. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (#17 on HMV's list), and...
26. FRIDAY THE 13TH (#25 on HMV's list)
Hmmm...
While I agree with him regarding the inclusion of THE LOST BOYS on HMV's list, the "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list is no less suspect with the inclusion of...
34. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959), and
47. THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)
... both of which have more in common with SCARY MOVIE (1996) than PSYCHO (1960), and...
38. Michael Jackson's THRILLER (1983)
... which I hope was included because of the involvement of director John Landis and SFX artist Rick Baker (both from AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON), and not because anyone involved actually feels that it's one of the "top 50 horror films of all time."
I posted the following response to the "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list...
"What's the average age of these "Cyber-Horror Elitists"? I imagine most of them were teenagers between the late '70s and the early '90s. Doesn't the difference between the HMV list & the "Cyber-Horror Elitist" list indicate how out of touch these elitists are with the general public?"
The following comment was posted in response.
"Perhaps, in hind-sight, the "Cyber-Horror Elite" label was a bit ill-advised, but I did go out of my way to indicate that it was tongue-in-cheek.
Alas...
As for the age issue, I'll say this. One of the reasons I wanted to see the differences in a list compiled by rabid horror fans/writers is that I suspected it would be more representative of the entire history of the genre, not just recent years. And I think I was right. Not being around when something was out is no excuse for someone who professes to be a hardcore fan. I grew up in the '80s, yet I'm a huge fan of Universal and Hammer, for example. A real fan goes out of his way to discover things beyond his own personal experience. We've got every decade of cinema represented on this list. Sure, the '70s and '80s are represented more than other periods. And part of that is due to the age of the participants. But, if I may take a stand, there are many who could argue that it may also be because that era yielded some of the finest horror films we've ever gotten. Certainly better than what's out there now. I personally that the '70s was the best decade for movies bar none, both horror and otherwise..."
Except for eight films (seven from Europe, one from Mexico), I feel that the "Cyber-Horror Elite's Top 50" is mostly representative of the American history of the genre, and largely excludes films from recent years.
From the "Cyber-Horror Elite" list's blog post:
"No movie in the top 12 was made in the last 25 years.
No movie in the top 14 was made in the last 10 years.
Only one movie in the top 26 was made in the last 20 years.
Four of the top 10, and 3 of the top 5, were made in the 1970s."
Only two films in the last 10 years were included in the entire list, excluding Asian, Australian, British, French and Mexican horror films from this time period.
Despite the list's obviously nostalgic leanings, there are no Hammer Horror films. Dario Argento barely made the list with SUSPIRIA at #49, despite the direct influence of Argento's films on their #1 pick, John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. Other obvious omissions include Fritz Lang's M and Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE.
In Fritz Lang's M, Peter Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys upon children. Some local gangsters in pre-WWII Berlin put Beckert on trial in their own underground court. If this doesn't seem similar to Freddy Krueger's backstory (changing the setting and substituting parents for gangsters), perhaps the children singing a rhyme about the killer in the beginning of both films will help you make the connection. It's also one of the earliest (if not the earliest) films featuring a serial killer.
As for the significance of DIABOLIQUE, I will defer to Turner Classic Movie's website (source: TCM )
"Just a few years earlier, the French import DIABOLIQUE (1955) had made an enormous splash, one of the most popular foreign films ever. Its depiction of what appears to be a supernatural return from the grave, ultimately revealed to be an elaborate criminal hoax, left an indelible mark on thriller-makers. Alfred Hitchcock set to making PSYCHO (1960) in the DIABOLIQUE mold. B-movie maven William Castle practically made a career in the mid-50s with DIABOLIQUE-inspired horror quickies."
There have been no shortage of "homages" to the scene in Diabolique where someone believed to be dead appears to come back to life. Numerous films from the "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list - including CARRIE, FRIDAY THE 13th and HALLOWEEN - have "borrowed" this idea in their final frames.
I was introduced to DIABOLIQUE years ago by way of Stephen King's non-fiction book Danse Macabre, where it's listed among the 100 films King feels "contributed something of value to the genre."
Four Stephen King films made the "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list. As previously pointed out, "B-movie maven" William Castle's THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is also on the list. Edison's silent film FRANKENSTEIN, of which no copy was known to exist until the 1970s (suggesting little to no influence on most of the last century of horror cinema) somehow also made the list, yet a film as directly influential as Diabolique failed to make the list.
Is this more of an "effrontery" than the inclusion of SAW on the HMV list? Not in my opinion.
I'm guessing that deep down, one of the primary problems the "Cyber-Horror Elite" have with horror films from the current decade (besides THE MIST, which was an homage to old-style monster movies) is that they fail to re-create the way horror films made them feel when they were young and new to the genre (which is what I was getting at with my comment about the age of the people polled). It seems their list is more than a little skewed in favor of films they watched growing up, combined with films that "had to be included" because they were "historically significant" (Like Edison's FRANKENSTEIN).
How can a modern horror film that's not an homage (and appealing to nostalgia) make anyone who's been watching horror films for decades feel like they did when they were young - before they spent decades watching horror films?
Put another way, I feel it has less to do with horror films not being as good as they used to be, and more to do with "horror junkies" unable to get the same "high" they used to get.
Here's another response to my comment:
"Populist observations aside, the “general public” already have a voice. It’s called The Box Office. The top-grossing film of all times is James Cameron’s TITANIC. That, I suppose, makes it the greatest film ever made, and critics who would list several hundred films ahead of it are obviously out of touch.
As a contributor to the Vault list, I was not concerned with current tastes, pop culture fads or what marketing sells as “hot”. Being asked to list “the greatest” horror films, I simply made a list of films that I thought were significant in horror film history..."
When I was referring to "the general public," I wasn't referring to the general public who feel that TITANIC is the greatest film ever made, I was referring to the general public who enjoy horror films (and voted THE EXORCIST the best horror film of all time on HMV's list), who don't happen to be "horror historians".
I have a problem with "significance in horror film history" necessitating inclusion in a "best of" list, rather than an "historically significant" list. The first iteration of an idea isn't always the "best." The "Cyber-Horror Elite's" list makes my point for me, despite their professed general disdain of remakes, re-interpretations and "re-imaginings."
Their list includes three "re-imaginings" of DRACULA (including NOSFERATU, which itself was "re-imagined" from Bram Stoker's novel) and two "re-imaginings" of FRANKENSTEIN (if you include the sequel, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN). This list also includes THE THING ("re-imagined" from THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD), ALIEN ("re-imagined" from IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, EVIL DEAD II (an almost slapstick "re-imagining" of THE EVIL DEAD) and THE FLY ("re-imagined" from the original film starring Vincent Price).
The only good reason (which I'm well aware is far from the only reason, or even the primary reason) to make a film which "re-imagines" an old story is to give it a new interpretation. The more faithful a remake is to a previous version of a story (which seems to be some weird kind of gold standard by which remakes are judged), the more pointless it is to me.
Fiction in general (and horror in particular) has evolved from generation to generation by re-interpreting and re-telling old stories. Condemning this practice not only shows a disregard for history, but cuts off a modern audience's gateway to the past.
How? Let me explain...
How many people would never have watched NOSFERATU if they weren't already a fan of a later DRACULA film? How does discouraging "casual fans" from watching remakes of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, DAWN OF THE DEAD, HALLOWEEN or any other film encourage them to become fans of the genre and subsequently seek out older versions of the films they enjoy?
I'm not suggesting that people should pretend to enjoy films they don't like. I'm suggesting that going into modern horror films with appropriate expectations may cause both "casual fans" and "horror historians" to discover films they enjoy.
("Appropriate expectations" is not a euphemism for "lower expectations." I'm thinking an attitude along the lines of, "It's not going to re-create the feelings of films I enjoyed decades ago when I was younger and new to the genre, so I'm not going to hold that against this film," seems appropriate.)
I understand that new films are generally judged in comparison to older films, but I haven't seen any complaints about how:
Tod Browning's DRACULA is inferior to Murnau's NOSFERATU,
John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN is inferior to Hitchcock's PSYCHO, or
David Cronenberg's THE FLY is inferior to Kurt Neumann's original film.
Perhaps it's because they're judged based upon the films they are, not against the films they aren't.
I'm thinking a Fangoriaonline.com list is in order. Share your thoughts in the forum, and let's see if we can't raise a little more hell...
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